Falls the Shadow
by KrisEleven
Summary: What would have happened to the four, if Niko hadn't found them? What would they have become then? A collection of one-shots where the circle had to survive without Winding Circle. Companion pieces to 'Always Us'. Chapter 7, long live: "What did he want? Briar hadn't wondered for weeks, now, since Sandry had stepped off her boat, onto his docks, and had drawn him into darkness."
1. the incessant dissolving of silk

A/N I recommend you read my one-shot Always Us, before you read these. It explains the whole AU idea in a single sitting, while these take place across their lives (running from the beginning of _Sandry's Book_ and through to their teen years in an AU 'verse), and are not always in order or fully explanatory, however if you want to read these and do not want to read the story that comes first (or it's been a while), I will put a small sentence before each one to place the piece in context. Always Us can be found through my profile page.

This story takes place about a year after Sandry is found in the store-room by grave-robbers, instead of Niko.

* * *

Sandry shivered in the cold. It wasn't a delicate tremor; the cold had long since seeped into her bones and she shook so that either her teeth chattered, or her hands trembled too much to manipulate the rags of silk held in her hands. Since _that_ was unacceptable, she allowed her teeth to click-clack and put the sound out of her mind.

Brushing dirty strands of hair out of her face, she regarded the creation on her lap. She hadn't been given a cloak by the grave-robbers who had found her in Zakdin. It hadn't mattered too much in the warm Pebbled Sea, but she was sure they had been heading north for the past month or so now and nights were getting cold.

Boards creaked above her head and she froze, even her shivering silenced as she looked up through the hulls' boards, waiting to see if the door leading down to the prison would be opened. There was another door separating her cell from below-deck, but there was always a chance light would be brought down into her sanctuary, and she had to brace herself when that occurred. There were some moans, stifled, from the other side of the hull. Instead of an opening door and footsteps on the stairs, though, the walker moved on after a few long moments, and Sandry allowed herself to focus again on the task at hand.

She had collected a few strips of silk from one of the caravans they had moved her in, while they traveled on land over the past weeks. She had enough rags collected to make something that would keep her warm, create a hood to cover her eyes and keep her in darkness, and cover the thread-bare dress she still wore, even a year after the plague, but she had no threads and none of her captors would give her any.

Instead, she turned the rags she had collected over in her hands, identifying them by feel alone. This was the sea-in-a-storm-grey cotton that she had found in the first ship they had used to take her away from Hatar island. This was what was left of a sack they had once put over her head. That was green cotton, of a dress left behind by a slave. This, a pretty rose linen she hadn't expected to find in the basement of an inn sympathetic to the money some grave-robbers paid to keep quiet; it had been a curtain or bedsheet, once, but was ragged now. They were all unwanted pieces, discarded until she came across them, desperate enough to make them something new.

Except her newest, her silks. She turned the wisp-smooth lengths in her hand. Once they had left the sea, they had been travelling over land for weeks, in wagons. She had been hidden away in one of them, packed in with the goods they were going to sell in Namorn when they got rid of her, and she had managed to steal these lengths of silk. She had known at the time that they would probably be missed, but she couldn't pass them up once she came across them. She didn't know what colour they were; she had been in the dark in the wagons, and was moved across some docks and into the lower decks of the ship at night, but she loved the feel of them. They whispered to her, in the darkness.

_Perhaps I don't need threads_, she thought, as she handled her treasures. _Will you help me make something warm?_ she asked them, and felt their chorus of agreement.

Smiling into the darkness, she set about arranging the linen into the correct shape. As she started pulling threads loose so she could attach her other bits of cloth into the vague shape of a cloak, she allowed her mind to wander. They were going to Namorn; she was almost positive about it now. She had known they were planning something for her. There had been other slaves and captives in their care in the long months she had been with them, all sold before they left their ship on the Pebbled Sea, but they had been treated differently than she was. They had never had Sandry beaten, or whipped, had never taken her away to screams and cat-calls; she had heard all of that happen to others.

Sandry they left alone, in the darkness. She whispered for the green dress to cooperate with her as she arranged it as a hood, using the tear along the front to separate it into a hem for the bottom of the cloak, as well. It eventually agreed, and she used the threads that came loose to attach each piece into place.

She didn't mind the darkness. It was the light that brought more slaves, the light that brought slavers, the light that brought pain and change and things she'd rather not (ever ever) see. In the darkness, she could sit with her silks and be left alone.

But they were going to Namorn, and if ten-year old noble, just-a-girl Sandry wasn't smart enough to figure out that the grave-robbers who found her through her nurse's magic were going to ransom her, eleven-year old Sandry-in-the-dark was. She considered her position as she attached the grey cotton in strips so it fell down the back of the cloak, filling in some of the thread-bare or torn patches of the rose sheet. She had been talking to her collection of fabrics so long that she was beginning to get a feel for it, and clothes and ropes and scarves and sheets of the men above her very nearly called out to her. She was locked down in the darkness, but they rode the very men she hated and would be more than happy to strangle them in their sleep, or drag them overboard, or hang them from the rigging. Sandry had sat up an entire night and talked to the cloth overhead, knowing that she could kill the men who kept her; she _could_ kill them all.

But then she would have to step into the light, for the first time in a year... she found the concept one she could hardly bear to think about.

They were taking her to her cousin. Berenene would pay the ransom, Sandry was sure. Right now, they were doing just as she wanted, and she was left to her own devices as well... No need to take matters into her own hands, then.

_And if cousin doesn't pay,_ Sandry thought as she lined the interior of the clock with the sack, for warmth, _then it will be time for another plan._

There was a quiet sobbing from the other side of the door. The slaves had been bought a few ports ago and were to be sold in the next few nights. With darkness, the ship stopped and the slavers began looking for entertainment. This group of slaves knew this by now, they had been on the sea for nearly a week. Sandry had been on the other side of a door or room from this scene for a year; something she had initially found so horrific had become routine. She didn't even consider those chained on the other side of the door as she planned the slavers' futures. She didn't think about it, much, but the girl she had been a year ago wouldn't recognize the person she was now.

Perhaps wouldn't _want_ to recognize her. Sandry's fingers froze on her almost-completed cloak, but there was too much history in that, too much she had lost and couldn't reclaim, too much blood and pain and tears and so she let it go for the last time. In it, the last of the child she had been slipped away, dissolving in the endless darkness of this new world she lived in.

Sandry let the silk flow between her fingers before she asked them to weave their way into the collar of the cloak, under the hood.

She draped it around her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her hair. The silk fell around her cheeks and over her forehead to her nose, covering her eyes entirely. The door to the hull creaked open, footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the sobbing grew louder. Sandry drew the cloak of rags around her and waited in the darkness.


	2. if you do, if you don't

A/N Since Briar was not rescued from the docks by Niko, he ended up working as a convict for a year in Sotat before he escaped to Emelan.

* * *

It had been a long winter. Late into spring, storms still blanketed the city. The seas were obviously nigh-impassable, since not a ship had taken harbour in Summersea's port in nearly two days.

For Briar, who relied on a job unloading ships just to pay for a room he shared with four other people and enough to put some beans and broth on his table at night, the lack of work was becoming troubling to the extreme. There was nothing to fall back on; no stash under his thin mattress or families with floors he could sleep on until the sea decided to play nice. There were few places that would hire an almost-fifteen year old with too many scars and two 'x's on his hands. Briar had found out years ago –when he'd first arrived –that most of them demanded things he would rather starve than give. Briar nearly _had_ starved his first few weeks off the boat from Sotat, until luck and chance found him at the docks at the right time to pick up a job there.

_Not that I'm far away from starving, now_, he thought, rubbing a hand over an aching stomach and scowling. He hadn't eaten yet, and with nothing coming into the harbour, it looked like it would be at least another full day until he had coin.

Lightning lit the small room, thunder crashing around him almost immediately after. If the storm carried on any longer, there would be no work for at least two days. Two days without food, two days in which to avoid the landlord, or find himself out on his ear (again). The time seemed impassible, impossible, unfeasible.

Briar punched the wall beside the waxed window, impotent. He didn't know what to _do_. There was no one he could turn to for help. He could try to fall in with some thieves or muggers, pick up a job, but he knew the risks. Harriers were as likely to arrest a bloke for hanging with the wrong crew as for actually doing something illegal, and his two 'x's were guaranteed to get him hauled in front of a magistrate. He wouldn't survive another round as a convict. He couldn't.

His stomach protested again. Not that he would survive a free man much longer, either. Rations had been meager, and you were likely to lose 'em if someone bigger set their eyes on you, but at least they were daily. Nothing was sure, out on the streets. Briar wondered, sometimes, why he had bothered to escape at all. Nothing had changed. Nothing was better. He even still worked on a dock! There was no magical solution waiting for him, if he could just get far enough from the streets he had been tossed out on as a kid. No one, anywhere, cared about one more street brat turned ne'er-do-good with 'x's on his hands. He had had his chances (not that he had ever seen them pass him by), he had made his choices (when it was to choose between livin' and dyin', no in-between, no shades of grey) and now he had to live with what came from that (ah –_this _Briar understands; he's been living with the scrap ends of what higher-ups left him since he was four years old).

Briar listened to the storm and the drunken mumbles of one of the men he shared the rent on the room with and tried to decide what to do.

The Bags would blame where he was now on the choices he had made, he was sure. But there was a secret of slums everywhere, whether it be Deadman's District or the Mire, and Briar – after years of fighting and planning and thieving and _trying_ – had finally come to realize what it was.

No choices he could make would change anything at all.

So, Briar listened to the storm and allowed it to do his raging for him.


	3. we, like the ghosts, have no memories

A/N Niko did not find Daja after her family's shipwreck, but she was picked up by pirates who thought a Trader would make a valuable slave aboard ship; this takes place within the year.

* * *

Life on the pirate ship began at dawn, when you were one of the lucky ones who got to sleep at night. For Daja, the work never really stopped. Most of Enahar's slaves were taken from the Battle Islands, or from raids along the coast of the Pebbled Sea; farmers and merchants and shop-owners, not sailors. Blue Traders were born on the waves (or so they told the _kaqs_). She had lived most of her life at sea, anyway, and knew more about keeping a ship in running order than any ten other slaves. It meant the pirates didn't have to chase after her, making sure she wasn't going to sink them all, and that made her valuable.

Well, more valuable than the other slaves, so only a bit more than worthless. On her second week aboard ship, a slave man had been injured in the rigging and they had thrown him over the side as unceremoniously as her own family had tossed scraps after a meal. She had no illusions that she would be kept aboard if she wasn't useful. There were jobs she couldn't do, at ten, that the slaves were responsible for, and it put her at a disadvantage. She had been saved from the waves once; she didn't want to have to survive alone in the depths of the ocean again. There could be only so much luck in the world for one person (no matter how twisted her rescue had ended up being).

So she tied knots, and handled lines, and kept look-out, in addition to the plethora of jobs the pirates were too lazy and the other slaves too inexperienced to handle. The pirates, knowing she could be relied on to do their tasks correctly, grew lazier as the weeks passed until she could be on deck all night, catching up on the work they didn't want to do.

After three weeks, she grew so tired, that any time they had to go below she would fall into her corner of the hull and deeply into sleep.

She was so busy trying to stay alive, that Daja had time for nothing else. Her family lay under the waves, and she had not prayed to them in weeks. To be forgotten was the worst kind of death, and Daja felt a twinge of fear every time she thought of their ghosts, neglected and angry.

But Daja had no one alive who cared about her_._ If she joined them beneath the waves there would be no one to remember a thing about any of them. Daja didn't want to forget, but she didn't want to die more. So every time she took to her bed without a prayer, or abandoned their memory for the real work she had to accomplish, she told herself she would make it up to them tomorrow.

But still, there was work to do. And Daja avoided the pirates' wrath and kept herself from joining her family beneath the waves. She felt like she had betrayed them only when she remembered to think on them at all, and it grew less and less often. Instead days passed and she forgot the colour of her mother's eyes, and the sound of her father's laugh and the differences in her brothers' humour, and the way her sisters would tease her, and they slipped further and further from her mind.

One day she would look back on them and realize they had already been forgotten, but for now there was more work to do.


	4. lies the promises hold

A/N This follows all four and takes place in different times of their lives. It sets up their ages, but if you haven't read Always Us, you may be confused at this point. Warning: Themes are mature, though not explicit.

* * *

Daja is ten years old.

She has been taken into battle on a pirate's ship, as the greed of another drives her into the heart of a firestorm. No one thinks twice about her being on the ship, no one cares that she is there only because she was lucky enough (or unlucky, she supposes, since it didn't really turn out for her, now did it) to be the only one alive while her family sleeps (died) under the waves. No one cares because she is a slave, and she isn't important enough for people to wonder why she is on deck with a boom-stone flying towards her, not important enough for anyone to care that she is going to die.

She screams and, suddenly, she feels the boom-stone as if it was a part of her. Bronze and iron and sulfur and charcoal blaze in her minds-eye, and as she throws out her hands she pushes it away because she does not want to die; not even to rejoin her family and escape the fire and screaming and fear, does she want to die now.

The boom-stone flies on an angle, as if her wild swing had connected and sent it awry. It explodes, spraying the ship with a sheet of water. Her braids are soaked to her scalp and Daja looks at her hands and back up in astonishment. She scans the deck, confusion setting in, and she supposes she just wants to be sure there _is_ a ship around her, still (not like last time she got a scare at sea), she see the pirate captain, Enahar, watching her closely.

She thinks that she would have been better off with the boom-stone.

(She changes her mind about this impression many times, but, as the years pass, decides that she was probably right).

* * *

Sandrilene fa Toren is eleven years old.

It is the first time she has been in a well-lit room since her parents died, and she can't help but duck her head and reach for a hood that is not there. They took her cloak of rags and changed her into a new dress (first new dress in a year, she thinks, smoothing the hand over fabric that doesn't know her well enough to be a second skin, and this makes her feel uncomfortable and vulnerable) before they would take her to her cousin. They bathed her and combed her hair, too, but it didn't take the wildness out of her, and Sandry knows this as soon as she walks in. The curtsy comes naturally, but the light (too much light, too much light, too much light, too much light) does not, and neither does her smile. Too many people staring at her, even with just her cousin and an older lady who stands behind her, and two servants, and one guard (Sandry is used to counting the people in a room, if not usually by sight). The old woman, with grey in her light hair, starts when she sees Sandry as if she's seen a ghost and stares at her, intensely. A hand of hers drifts out as if to hold Berenene back when she moves to embrace her long-lost cousin, but it isn't what one does to an Empress. Sandry flinches backwards, though, the thought of that much contact with a person too much for her to keep composure through, and that does that on its own (though _it_ isn't what you're supposed to do with an Empress, either).

Berenene tries to smile, but hers is as forced as Sandry's is, now. Sandry supposes her cousin hadn't thought through just what she would be getting when she paid the ransom.

She covers her eyes because she can't take the light anymore, and screams when someone touches her arm.

* * *

Roach doesn't know how old he is.

There was more important stuff to think on, when he was runnin' the streets. It's not like the Thief Lord would be throwin' a shin-dig, wishin' him a good day and a rich year, givin' out gifts. There was nothin' to mark the seasons but wet feet and cold feet and dry feet – no food and no food and no food – rags and layers of rags and not enough rags to keep from shiverin' out of one's damned skin.

Even so, he's been at the docks for better part of a year, and has learned the ropes. Work until you can't work no more but keep workin', less you want a beating. Don't look anyone in the eye. Don't get in front of someone bigger'n you in food line, or they'll beat ya out of it. Don't smart-talk the guards because they can hurt you, and you can't do nothin' about it. Don't gang up with anyone weak. Don't end up alone with anyone, because you never know what they'll want from you.

Except Roach knows exactly what is wanted from him, when he breaks his last rule and slips into a shed to grab a length of rope that isn't frayed to the beyond, because you can't ask someone else to go with you; then you'll be alone with _them_ won't cha? And he needs the rope to keep working (see rule one), and he thought he'd slipped away all sneaky-like without anyone the wiser, but it didn't work out. The sun comin' in behind him is shaded as one of the new men in his group, arrived just yesterday, fills the space in the door. Roach drops the rope onto the shelf, as near the door as he can reach without gettin' in grabbin' distance – and tucks his hands behind him, backin' away slowly, but there's nowhere to run.

The man knows it; he smiles.

* * *

She is fifteen years old.

They asked for her name, when she woke up in this strange place, but she's having a hard time remembering it. She knows, somewhere inside, that it's because of the hospital they put her in. Not these people, but ones with the same coloured robes and smiles and empty words. The hospital kept her on potions and put spells on her and made it hard to think, and hard to make the world do what she wanted it to. She knows that she has forgotten things, but that's the funny thing about forgetting, because it is gone gone gone and she can't get it back.

Just like she can't get her silence back. Oh, it is still hers. She hasn't spoken to them, after all, not all the time she's been in this little locked room in a temple in... Emelan, they said. She remembers that country from a book of maps, from before the temple and their hospital. She doesn't like to think of that time, but the book is a safe topic, one that doesn't make the wind gust and the earth shake, so she thinks about that map and wonders how many potions they had to give her to get her all the way from Capchen to Emelan without her waking up.

No wonder she can't think in a straight line, something she is sure she was able to do, once. At least once she got herself out of the hospital. No more locks when there were no more doors, and no keys needed when no one was left to hold them...

But the silence is broken as the person in front of her talks and talks. He is in a blue robe and he wants her to tell him her name, but she won't because she remembers it, now that things are getting a little less hazy and the world doesn't feel like it is running away from her brain anymore, but she also remembers how the last temple she was in locked her away, and he is wearing the same robe and she keeps her silence locked around her.

Tris watches the Dedicates warily and says nothing.

* * *

The empty promise Daja was told:

"This is all we'll ask of you."

They were limping away from the temple on the seaside, where they had taken Daja into the firestorm and managed to kill and be killed, but not to get what they wanted, in the end. There are some slaves in coloured robes on another ship, but they had lost nearly half of their pirates and would have lost more had Daja not sent away that last stone. That is what Enahar is talking about, now; about how she did that and what it means and what he wants her to do with it.

Because she felt the boom-stone in her head and can practically see how it was made. She thinks she _could_ make one, like Enahar is asking, if she had the time to figure everything out. That makes the pirate captain ask questions rapidly, like shooting out orders, when her moving things around didn't get him nearly so interested. That is what made him make his promise.

Does she want to make boom-stones? No, but he is talking about getting her back to the Battle Islands and leaving her there to work on them. No more ocean with its killer storms and over-board slaves and fire-screaming-fear? She doesn't care that he's lying through his teeth, because she just wants to get solid land beneath her feet and forget how terrifying war was, forget that she ever made a life at sea and loved it.

She knows very well that he'll ask more of her than this; that he will demand she give more and more weapons, because his greed is there to see in his eyes (greed for destruction as well as wealth, because he wasn't scared in the fire, he was _excited_), but she accepts because it is the lesser of two evils.

Daja pretends that she doesn't know she is signing her life away to the greed in Enahar's eyes and believes his empty promise.

* * *

The empty promise Roach was told:

"I won't hurt you, boy."

Roach very nearly rolls his eyes. Well, he wants to, but knows that if he takes his eyes off'a the man he is gonna be in deep trouble, so he doesn't say anything. His hands are still behind his back as the man approaches, breathing heavily.

As he reaches out to touch Roach's arm, the boy twists and lunges, bringing his hands out from behind his back to reveal two shivs, one made of a broken wooden handle and one of actual metal he had fished out of the shallows, some debris from a ship sunk out at sea, somewhere. The metal one cuts the tendon in the man's wrist, the wooden one into the gut and the man screams and swings wildly at Roach. The fists connect – nowhere to dodge in this stupid little shed – but he rolls with it, ending up under the shelf, which runs the length of the shed and right to the door. He crawls until he is past the bleedin', cursin' man. He reaches back only to grab the rope he dropped onto the shelf and rushes into the light.

His crew is split in their reaction, less than half of them owin' money. He wasn't even good bettin' material anymore, since he always had his knives on him, somewhere, and was still street-quick. It wasn't the first time someone had tried to get 'im, and wouldn't be the last, but only the new ones tried it now. The rest of 'em had a nickname for him, and the sharp things he always had on hand for when it was least expected – Briar.

Briar gets back to work without even a guard punishin' him for the time away, which is a good day on the docks for a convict. He thinks about stupid promises and how they mean nothin' and he doesn't care because he always has his knives (but he wishes he had never had to hear anyone lie to him about _that_ in the first place).

* * *

The empty promise Sandry was told:

"Everything is going to be just fine, now."

They had managed to figure out to get rid of some of the lamps, so after Sandry had calmed down she and her cousin sit to speak about her future in Namorn.

"I want very much for you to stay here, my dear cousin," the Empress says, sounding a little less certain after actually meeting Sandry.

The older woman, the mage Isha, steps in with a, "Oh, I am sure your Majesty would agree that _clehame_ Sandrilene would be more comfortable somewhere quieter, away from the bustle of court, at least for a while."

Sandry supposes they think her stupid, but she is not. She has had a year to develop a nack for reading between the lines of conversations; she had so often heard just snatches of conversation among her captors and had to piece together her situation from it. Isha does not want her anywhere near her Empress; she is nearly twitching with anxiety and Sandry needs to piece together just why that is. She will, eventually – when she is in the dark again and can relax.

"My cousin is gracious," she says, remembering her part to play now that the light has retreated to a single lamp, "but my lady Isha is correct. I would much rather somewhere quiet where I can... recover from the past year."

She ducks her head to hide her expression as Berenene pats her arm. She supposes it makes her look frail and overwhelmed, which is good; better than disgusted, anyway.

"And you shall have it, my dear," Berenene says, "I will make the arrangements to have to join my daughters –" Isha twitches. "–just as soon as you are up to the travel."

"Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty." Sandry stands and curtsies, dismissing herself. It is rude and Berenene knows it and stiffens, but she pretends to have thought of it first and Sandry cannot help it when the light is digging into her eyes and she can stand it no more.

As she walks to the door Isha says, "_Clehame_, forgive me, but I have forgotten... were you tested for magic when you were young?"

_Ah ha_, Sandry thinks, but says, "Of course, viymese, and they saw not a speck."

She walks out on her royal cousin and her very nervous Great Mage, thinking of magic and herself, piecing things together.

She had dismissed Berenene's assurance as soon as it was uttered; everything _would_ be fine, or, just as Sandry wanted it to be, because she would insist on just that.

* * *

The empty promise Tris was told:

"It won't be like that again."

And Tris really, really wants to laugh because the door is _locked_, you idiots. You lock me in, just like they locked me in, after force-feeding me potions while I was under your spell, just like their hospital did, and you expect me to believe a single word you say?

Tris says nothing as the Dedicates assure her that they will not hurt her, that she has magic- not a spirit or madness, that her life will get better at Winding Circle, that she will be safe.

Knowing that they are lying (they are all liars, in the end), Tris doesn't listen to a word they say. Her grey eyes gaze about the room until they fall upon the window that does not latch.

She waits for them to leave so she can make her escape from this new prison they hold her in.

* * *

They all know an empty promise when they hear it, by now.

(But, oh, how they all want to believe the lies the promises hold)


	5. rise up above it

**A/N I think its just you and me, LAHH. :) I hope you enjoy it! If you have any requests, let me know. This is Tris at around fourteen; after Niko did not take her from the temple in Capchen, they continued to believe her possessed or elemental, something Tris did not help when she destroyed a series of placements... she ended up in a hospital until she broke out and ran wild in an unknown city in Capchen, at which point this story takes place.**

* * *

Pigeons flew low over the dingy rooftops, spooking dramatically when something startled them, their wings flapping rapidly as they flew in all directions. Above them, crows perched on the tips of the rooftops, talking to each other raucously, but silent on the wing. Below, the street was almost empty, the sun having not even risen over the expanse of buildings that stretched into the morning mist. Its grey light filtered into the sky, a transition from black to bruise-blue, but most of the humans below were still tucked into warm houses, their days not beginning until the sunlight managed to touch the rooftops and light the east with pink.

The girl once known as Trisana, formerly of House Chandler, stepped around a chimney and followed the angle of the roof, bare feet finding purchase on slippery roof tiles. If the sun meant that it was time for the humans below to go about their loud, meddling business, then it was most definitely time for the girl to hide away.

In one hand, she held onto a long bolt of cloth folded around her newest acquisitions; bread stolen from a bakery's first morning batch, a new jacket from a dew-covered clothesline, a metal fork and spoon to replace her old wooden ones, a new kerchief she had seen in someone's bedroom, a block of cheese, some cider. She slipped in and out of houses as easily as she walked across the roofs, these days, and often times an object catching her attention was all it took to distract her into taking it.

There was a long wooden beam she had to crawl over to get from the east side of the alley to her old building, the attic of which was now her home. It was open to the elements, but that was how she liked it. Rain dripping on her food and a deep chill in the winter was worth it after two years in that place.

(don't think about it, don't think about it, don't, don't, don't)

The girl arranged her new things neatly around the room, making sure everything had a place on what furniture she had constructed from that left behind. There was no carrying tables or chairs across the rooftops in the middle of the night (she had tried only once) and so she made due. Perhaps thanks to her life before the attic room, it was tidy in its own way... but, then, that was something she didn't think too long on either.

It was easy, some days, not to think about all the things she didn't want in her head. Everything ran a little slowly. Thoughts that should have come easy didn't come at all some days. A screen could be pulled over her mind until everything seemed clouded in mist, removed and distanced and remote.

It made up for the days when all Tris could do was rage and cry and replay her lost life.

Because she _did_ remember being Tris, even if it was one of those things she didn't, didn't, didn't think about.

It was far easier to push away the memories of being unwanted, given away, feared, locked up that it was to think about them. Thinking about what she was before gave Tris no resolution. She didn't feel better after crying about her parents. She didn't feel at peace when she came to a new understanding at why the temple feared her, called her a monster. She never forgave those in the hospital for the things they had done.

Instead, Tris raged until lightning and hail scared away her feathered friends, and the building shook and sent the mice scampering for the safely of their soft, lined nests in the floors, and the little people on the ground wondered and wandered into her life where they weren't wanted.

When she could forget, when the girl lured the mice back out into the open with pieces of her cheese and brought the pigeons cooing into the windowsills with the bread crumbs and the people forgot about the wild child living in the abandoned building... the girl felt almost okay then.

The girl left her mind blank of betrayals and disappointments and sadness and fear and since that was all Tris had ever known, this girl was not anyone at all.

The pigeons gathered and a mouse took a crumb from the girl's outstretched hand and the sun rose over the city.


	6. fighting a war that's already lost

****A/N This one is written for TPE's Halloween Challenge #1, which gave a series of quotes as prompts for fic! Link to the Tamora Pierce Experiment on my profile. The story follows Frantsen, who is Duke Vedris's heir in _Magic Steps_. This story takes place after the four have all managed to find their way to Summersea and have been fighting a coup to put Sandry in charge of the Citadel.

* * *

_"Something wicked this way comes." –Macbeth_

It was dark and it was quiet in the heart of the Citadel. Frantsen's wife and one of the ladies cried softly, still, but the rest of them had long since outlasted their panic. Deep, numbing fear had set upon them instead, and it was as heavy as the weight of the keep around them. Frantsen felt glued to his chair with it. He felt smothered in it.

He wanted to pace, but he feared his legs would not hold him. The room was dark, the mage-lights and lamps his father would no doubt have known to bring into the safe-room, had he been alive, were left outside in the panic when the Citadel was breached. Frantsen had been so _sure_. So sure that his hired swords would hold the keep against this invasion, that he and his family would be safe within its walls, as his father had always been safe as Duke, before him. His pride had them going about their daily lives without notice for the battles that raged through Summersea. They had been dining in the main hall when Duke's Guards had rushed in to move them to safety, safety that Frantsen's pride had refused to allow until it was too late.

There was crashing outside the doors and the ground shook. Either Frantsen's wife or her maidservant screamed and one of the children began to cry. Frantsen could not look away from the doors that were the only barrier between him and the evil that stalked him. There was magic in this sanctuary, but the spells that could be raised in order to make it impenetrable took time. Time Frantsen had not given them, since he had refused to allow that he may have to hide within his own Citadel.

How had it come to this? How had everything gone so terribly wrong? When his father had died suddenly of a weak heart, Frantsen had been shocked and saddened by the news. Yes, he had also been pleased that his father had made him heir to Emelan long ago; his older brother was long dead, neither Cole nor Gospard had aspirations to the Dukedom. He was well aware that his father had begun to think he was unsuited to the title, and if he had felt relief that Vedris had died before he could change his successor, it didn't mean he was not a loving son. He had even scolded his wife when she expressed the thought aloud.

Besides, he had been sure he could be as good a Duke as the old man, who was more suited to military affairs than the politics and pomp required to garner the respect a great man deserved. His father hadn't even held court; Frantsen had planned to change all of that.

Another crash outside the doors. He _had_ planned to change so many things. And then, out of the blue, as if they were ghosts that materialized from the grave one night, the soldiers had begun their attack, already _within_ the city. Namornese soldiers, led by the Empress's ward, his own cousin Sandrilene. If it had been only this, he was sure he could have led his Guards to victory... but she came with dark magic and no one – _no one – _could be expected to stand against the power she and her pet mages wielded. Who had heard of a girl who could twist the ground to suck entire troops down into the sewers to drown, who could strike people down at will with lightning? Who could have expected his cousin to find a mage capable of creating boom-stones from nothing, enough of them to supply and army and level the Arsenel in a single night? Who could defend against the assassin that killed off his generals in their sleep, quick knives and silent steps whittling his support and his sources of knowledge to the quick before he even knew to defend them against this unknown enemy?

_I could not have known that it would turn out this way,_ he thought as the doors began to sprout and grow, old dead wood betraying him as it chose life over their ages-long duty and grew out from the middle, creating room for his enemies to walk through. The ground shook again and walls and the ceiling crumbled and rained dust with the force of it. The children and women alike were screaming. Frantsen's guards stepped forward, swords bared, but were quickly felled; two strangled on their own clothes and one with a throwing knife in the throat. The two died slowly, trying desperately to rip the cloth that wove itself into their mouths; the third died quickly, the blood flowing for only moments before he was still. Behind him, the room was in chaos as four shadowy figures walked in from the hallway. Frantsen had not moved from his chair. This couldn't be. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. He was _Duke_.

He looked from brown eyes to green to grey and to too-bright blue. All were too young to look so utterly free of life.

"Cousin," the blue eyed girl said, nodding. She looked around the room, noting the panic-stricken family behind him, but not acknowledging them in any way.

"That is it, my friends," she said, turning to look at her companions. "The Citadel is ours. Welcome home."

_No_, Frantsen thought. _I am Duke. The Citadel is mine_. He opened his mouth to protest, but Sandrilene was walking from the room. "Daja, if you will," she said as she walked out. The dock-tough boy and feral girl followed her into the black. The dark-skinned girl dressed in sailor's clothes surveyed the room. Her eyes fell on his children and stayed there, but only for only a moment before Frantsen saw her shrug. She pulled a small stone from her pocket, threw it amongst them, and walked away.

Frantsen stared at it, still immobile.

This wasn't how it was supposed to –

The boom-stone exploded. Frantsen fer Toren, Duke of Emelan, knew no more.


	7. long live

**A/N **Thanks to Rosa for helping me with this! Sandry has arrived in Summersea, and has hired Briar to help her, as we have seen in Always Us. They have started making their moves towards Sandry's coup, but are still living in the city and have not yet found either Daja or Tris.

**Summary** What did he want? Briar hadn't thought to wonder for weeks, now, since Sandry had stepped off her boat, onto his docks, and had drawn him into the darkness.

* * *

Briar sat on the bed to tug on the soft leather boots Sandrilene had delivered to him. It was nearly dark in his room, the light set in the furthest corner and lowered to a dim flicker as the Bag-girl herself was standing by the door, watching as Briar stood and tested the boots out, making sure they fit snugly and would make no sound. They were stained dark, just off black, like the rest of his clothes. His tunic had a hood that he could pull up over his head, but the rest fit on the tight side of fashionable, leaving no extra material to get caught in a fight or while he snuck about.

"I didn't want to put you all in black," the noble said, looking him over. "It looks too suspicious, if the Provost's Guard sees you in the street."

"Black isn't best for sneakin', anyhow," Briar muttered, checking the knives he had secured on his upper body, making sure each and every one was easy to draw. He had sharpened them already that evening. "No shadows are pure black, you know."

"I suppose not," she answered distantly, that shadows-child, and Briar didn't look up to mark the expression on her face. Some things were private. "You're _sure_ you have the address, the right room marked – "

"For the _last time_, Duchess, _yes_," Briar snapped, moving on to check the knives on his legs and in his boots. "If you don't stop fretting, I'm not going to do this at all."

"You don't have to," she said quietly. "I mean, if you don't want to."

He froze, one hand on the knife he had just slipped back into his ankle sheath, the other braced against the bed. They didn't do _this_, the two of them. They didn't do quiet concern and doubts and what they _wanted_. She had her madness and her darkness and her single-minded purpose. He had his ruthlessness and her money and his anger and that was what they were.

So he snarled, roughly: "just like a girl, to get cold feet at the last possible moment. You don't want to go through with this, Duchess, just give me the say-so." He pushed himself up to standing and stared at her. "But do it now, so I can get some sleep instead."

She stepped forward, turning her head away from the light, however dim it was. She looked up at him. "Good," she said, the quiet expression gone as if it had been in his imagination. The guards kept to the outer guard-room of this merchant's estate, out of her way unless absolutely necessary and Briar – skulking in dark corners – had seen more than one of the Namornese men make the gods-circle behind her back when she couldn't see them do it. She made them nervous with her darkness and her rags and her resolve to take this country, no matter what it took, no matter who paid the price.

But Briar understood that. Why _should_ she care about these people? When had any of them ever stuck a neck out for people like him, like this Bag-girl with her shadowed eyes? She made sense to Briar; it only made him nervous to see this shadow-princess show her human side. "Good," she repeated, and he _didn't_ breathe a sigh of relief that she was back to her normal self, no, he did not.

She handed him small dried rose, the previously red flower turned rust. The thorns were still sharp; he pricked himself as he reached to take it from her. She looked up at him, the blue he knew was in her eyes masked by her pupils, large and dark as they tried to pick up the little light she'd give them. "Leave this there, when it's done. When we do the others, I want them to know why."

Briar grinned, all teeth and malice instead of mirth. He tucked the rose into the pouch he would strap securely to his side. The clock tower in Market Square chimed the hour and Briar did a last quick check before he moved towards the door.

"Be careful," she said softly.

"Don't worry your neb about me, Bag," he said, slipping into the darkness. "I'll not lead them back here to you."

She snorted. "Just be _careful_, Briar."

"Don't wait up," he quipped and then was gone, down the staircase and out through the back door, into the small courtyard of the house Sandrilene had bought, one that led into a barely-used alley off Bowler's Lane. It was a quick walk up Fountain Street, into the Emerald Triangle where the nobles supporting the current Duke lived.

Where one less would live, after tonight.

Briar touched a hand to one of the knives he wore and walked at a sedate pace through the darkness, as if he owned it.

He passed only one pair of harriers, and they didn't look twice at him as he walked by, intent as they were on reaching Fountain Square and the food offered up free and hot for the Guards. Briar found the small street he and Sandry had strolled down last week – more an alley than an actual street, and one barely used during the day and neglected by the lord's guards in the evenings. He planned to climb over the hedge that protected the nobleman's property from riff-raff like Briar, but glanced around himself quickly first. If he was seen here, he would have to try to fight his way inside. He had brought multiple weapons for just that purpose, but knives would hold only so long against swordsmen, and he was unlikely – at best – to succeed, _and _survive.

Better if he could slip in, completely quiet... well, hedges _had_ grown for him before, back in Sotat, but that had been an accident. He closed his eyes, one hand reaching out towards the plant, not quite touching its flat needles. He wanted them to cover all traces of his entrance, was _asking _them to obey him.

_Stupid_, he thought and opened his eyes. His fingertips had been just brushing the expanse of greenery that surrounded the manor, thick and impenetrable. Now, they hovered over empty space, reaching into a gap in the hedges that showed Briar the inside of the gardens, and the lights of the house on the other side. He froze, staring. Stepping cautiously, he slipped through the gap without letting the hedge so much as brush the tips of his hair or clothes.

He paused as he stepped into the darkness of the yard. _Don't... don't close up til I'm back_, he thought, feeling ridiculous, but he felt a trill of agreement that sent him scurrying away.

Hurrying across the narrow expanse of greenery, Briar felt each of the plants respond to the low buzz of nervousness, of anticipation building in him. As he paused between two low-growing trees, their branches and stems practically vibrated in answer to his emotions. His breathing was even, his hands absolutely, completely steady as he climbed onto the wide windowsill of the back hall and pulled out his lockpicks, but the plants gave him away.

He landed in a crouch, froze to listen for any movement of someone who had heard the dull thump of his leather boots hitting the floor. There was only quiet; the household went abed early, as Sandry's spies had reported. He rose from the floor and closed the window behind him, careful not to latch it.

The master of the house worked after the family and most of the servants had gone abed. His office was on the main floor, only a few doors away. Briar ghosted down the corridor.

He opened the door quietly, without trying to be silent. The man sat in a comfortable chair, close to the fire. It gave off a whiff of sandalwood; expensive and meant only for luxury. Briar walked across the room.

"Put the tea on the table," the Lord said without looking up from the pages he was reading.

A number of suitably snarky replies flicked across Briar's mind, but instead he moved, quickly, behind the man, and laid his longest blade, pulled from the sheath at his waist as he moved, against the pulse in the man's throat. His victim gasped. "What – what do you want?" he asked, trembling against Briar's hands.

What did he want? Briar hadn't thought to wonder for weeks, now, since Sandry had stepped off her boat, onto his docks, and had drawn him into the darkness. He was not at home in the light, in the crowds. Perhaps he had been, once, in a lifetime before the streets and the cells and the docks, before all the anger and helplessness and loneliness had found too comfortable a home inside him. Sandry didn't try to fit, didn't try to forgive the light of the world for forsaking her, and Briar couldn't. It bound them together more securely, more fiercely than blood.

"Long live the Duchess," he whispered. Before the man could flail, he drew his knife across his throat. Blood gushed over both hands as he held the man still, waiting until he stopped thrashing before letting him go. Briar stood looking down for only a moment, the muscles in his arms screaming, his breath coming in quick gasps that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

In all his time on the streets, he had never... never _intentionally_...

_Quit bleating_! he yelled at himself, cleaning the knife and setting it back in his sheath. He moved around the chair and picked up the book the man had been reading. Opening it back to the now blood-splattered pages, he set it again on the dead man's lap. He reached into his pouch and pulled out the rose. It was no longer dead and dried, but had somehow come back to life, its petals a deep, flawless black. Briar set it on the pages of the book and turned his back room.

He hurried back the way he had come, ready to meet guards at every turn, but his trip back through the window and across the garden went unmolested. As he slipped through the hedges, he paused and closed his eyes, trying to picture what he wanted done.

He opened his eyes. The hedges were uniform across the hole that had previously existed, and had grown an extra quarter-foot in height along the top. Briar stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled away down the street.

He returned to the same rooms he had left only hours before, and changed into his usual clothes – the comfortable ones the Bag had brought for him – but as he turned to the cold water in the basin in the corner to wash his hands of the blood he looked around, the room seeming surreal and unfamiliar. His clothes felt too tight, the lamp beside the bed too bright, the furnishings too posh to possibly be his. They hadn't changed. Sandry hadn't done some dramatic renovation while he was gone, but he didn't fit into these ordered surroundings in the same way he had before he had killed a man.

He extinguished the lamp and stood in the dark. "Long live the Duchess," he whispered, his hands dripping onto the floor.


End file.
